oboeterry

Unfortunately upgrades get expensive real quick.

>*ugh* I kinda figured as much :-/

Internal gear hubs: Not so great an idea here - you'd need a chain tensioner which causes extra drag and chain wear, causing you to lose almost all the advantages of going to hub gear in the first place, plus it'll be heavier and not have a bigger gear range. Stick with the gears you have.

Disc brakes: These need special attachments on the frame which the Speed frame doesn't have, so it is not possible. For disc brakes you need different hubs anyway, so that means getting new wheels builteven if it was possible. Definitely not a good idea either.

>darn... oh well, both of these things weren't important, they just seemed cool..

Dynamo: Possible, you'd have to get a front wheel with a Dahon Joule dynamo built in. Costly as well, my preference for night riding is to use a Fenix torch with Eneloop rechargable batteries (which don't self-drain so you can leave them in for long times and still use them without recharging).

>Thanks, I'll have to look this up... batteries that don't self-drain? Interesting...

Suitcase: No easy solution. You might be able to get a Samsonite Flite through without excess baggage fees, but you'd still have to disassemble such as taking the wheels off. There are web sites that detail how to do this. The only quick solution is to get a Brompton which fits as-is; or perhaps a Downtube Mini which requires less disassembly

>Yeah, I was thinking about the Flite (after reading about it here and on the Dahon forum); it's only about 2" larger than airline regs, so I doublt they'd notice the size difference (at least I hope they don't); as to the wheels, the front (of course) is no problem, I'm just really non-mechanically inclined, so removing the rear wheel (with chain and derailleur) is pretty confusing for me, but I guess that I'll just have to figure it out...
Thanks so much for all of your help!

Terry :-)